Shardmind for 5e by DracoKnight [PEACH]

[DracoKnight]

So, I was poking around some wiki pages for races from previous editions, and I stumbled across the Shardmind! I love the thematics of the races that they had for 4e, and I instantly wanted to play one for 5e, so here's my first attempt at a Shardmind

EDIT: I have made JNAProductions' recommended changes.

[Requiemforlust]

So, I was poking around some wiki pages for races from previous editions, and I stumbled across the Shardmind! I love the thematics of the races that they had for 4e, and I instantly wanted to play one for 5e, so here's my first attempt at a Shardmind

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! YAY!!! A Shardmind! By far my favorite 4e race!

EDIT: once I'm done fangirling over the fact that someone made a 5e shardmind, I'll run the numbers and see how balanced it is. I like the flavortext you gave it

[PoeticDwarf]

Nice basic sharmind. I don't see anything wrong about it. Nicely written, I like it

[JNAProductions]

Right, let's OH MY GOD THAT LOOKS GORGEOUS!

Dracoknight, that is some fanciness you have going on there! Props to you for that!

Nice work on the fluff-how much of it is made by you and how much was just stolen from 4E?

And now, the stats:

Half-Elf style stat increases, but bumping Int instead of Charisma. Bit weaker, but not by much.

Speed is normal.

Crystalline Form is pretty powerful with bounded accuracy.

Living Construct gives some minor benefits.

Mental Shield resists a rare energy type.

Minor Telepathy needs more details. Can they respond back? Does it take an action?

Shard Swarm is... I'm not actually sure. Where can I find most of those spells? I'm a dumb, I just scrolled down.

Shard Swarm is a typical casting ability. The one thing is, why force? It's crystals-I'd make it purely slashing damage.

Overall, I think this race gets a bit too much. Great stats. +1 AC, and spells is probably a little too much. I'd drop one of them, but keep the more minor things. Probably you should just drop the +1 AC. After all, crystals shatter easily.

Alternatively, and this is iffy-add vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. That might balance out the power of the race. That being said, use this fix with caution. No other race seriously penalizes you (not even Drow, really) and this WOULD be a huge penalty.

[WarrentheHero]

The first thing that I see that could be an issue with this race is the Shard-Blade spell. It's a first level spell, but it's strictly better than the second-level Spiritual Weapon. It is important to note that this "stricly better -ness" stems largely from the fact that 2d4 has a 1-point higher minimum, but there is something to be said of the fact that Force Damage, as far as I can tell, is unresisted in 5e.

Granted, you only get it at 3rd level, which is when a caster gets 2nd level spells, but iirc, Tiefling gets a 1st level spell at 3rd level, and Shard-Blade is (slightly stronger than) a 2nd level spell.

[Amnoriath]

To put it simply you combined two races into one with extra bonuses. Not only is it a Warforged/Tiefling you then gave it an two stat bumps of one's choice but telepathy as well. This is beyond optimal.

[DracoKnight]

The first thing that I see that could be an issue with this race is the Shard-Blade spell. It's a first level spell, but it's strictly better than the second-level Spiritual Weapon. It is important to note that this "stricly better -ness" stems largely from the fact that 2d4 has a 1-point higher minimum, but there is something to be said of the fact that Force Damage, as far as I can tell, is unresisted in 5e.

It does indeed deal 2d4 which has a minimum damage of 2, however, it doesn't scale. And spiritual weapon does force damage as well. And this spell does half force/half slashing. It also never scales (even if it was on a caster's spell list). There isn't anything resistant to force damage, but the Helmed Horror is outright immune.

[DracoKnight]

Right, let's OH MY GOD THAT LOOKS GORGEOUS!

Dracoknight, that is some fanciness you have going on there! Props to you for that!

Thank you! I've been trying to put more effort into the content I put out. In aesthetic, fluff and mechanics.

EDIT: If you look at my homebrew link in my signature, I've started making PDFs like this for all of my homebrew, and they're all in the link.

Nice work on the fluff-how much of it is made by you and how much was just stolen from 4E?

The only thing that I took from 4e was the paragraph right after the quote. Everything else is the fluff from my campaign setting.

And now, the stats:

Half-Elf style stat increases, but bumping Int instead of Charisma. Bit weaker, but not by much.

I figured as much. Very useful for a Wizard (or the Mystic, which has been recently completed, but is unpublished).

Speed is normal.

Mhmm... I thought about dropping it to 25... would this make sense to anyone? The fluff reason would be that they're immortal, and not in a terribly huge hurry to get anywhere.

Crystalline Form is pretty powerful with bounded accuracy.

Yes, it is.

Living Construct gives some minor benefits.

Pulled it right from the Warforged.

Mental Shield resists a rare energy type.

It was chosen for flavor over everyday combat usefulness

Minor Telepathy needs more details. Can they respond back? Does it take an action?

I'm glad you asked. I will now have to figure that out

Shard Swarm is a typical casting ability. The one thing is, why force? It's crystals-I'd make it purely slashing damage.

Yeah. I was thinking about this, and changed it to force, but I'm going to change it to slashing.

Overall, I think this race gets a bit too much. Great stats. +1 AC, and spells is probably a little too much. I'd drop one of them, but keep the more minor things. Probably you should just drop the +1 AC. After all, crystals shatter easily.

Alternatively, and this is iffy-add vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. That might balance out the power of the race. That being said, use this fix with caution. No other race seriously penalizes you (not even Drow, really) and this WOULD be a huge penalty.

I had this in the original text. I am going to add it back in. It would add some risk to playing a shard mind, and I like that. Fluff/flavor it's great - you're made of crystals, so you're gonna shatter easily if you get hit by a hammer.

[SterlingWren]

Holy crap it's a shardmind! Yay! I was really disappointed that they weren't in the Eberron UA that came out forever ago. (Now, I realize that's probably because 5e doesn't have official psionics yet, but after that AMA with MM, I am SUPER PSYCHED!!!)

Okay, looking at the stats.

+2 INT, +1 to two abilities of your choice. This is more balanced (in my mind) than the Half-Elf's ASI. INT is far less useful for a PC than CHA is. Unless you're playing a Wizard (includes EK and AT) or (when it comes out) a Mystic.

Crystaline Form offers you a nice AC bump, but the bludgeoning vulnerability balances out the usefulness of that.

ALSO: vulnerability to bludgeoning damage! I don't like that in this edition there's no real downside to playing the races, other than you're not playing other races.

Living Construct is straight from the Warforged, like you said.

Resistance to psychic damage is good for certain builds (Bear Totem at 3rd level).

Telepathy is great, but I think that people over-emphasize its usefulness. It's not like you can do verbal components through telepathy. If that were the case, I would totally play a Shardmind Arcane Trickster.

Shard Swarm. Okay. You balanced this better than it was in 4e. Bursting shard is nice as a source of magical slashing damage, and d6 AoE cantrips already exist, with better damage types, so nothing's broken here. Shard-blade is nice, I don't agree with Warrenthehero - it's not OP. (And I homebrew spells as often as you homebrew PC races. That is to say, a LOT). And blur as their 5th level spell is not OP. In 4e they had basically misty step, and it was an encounter power, so it was basically whenever you rolled initiative, you had one use of it. Once per day (long rest) is not bad for a racial blur. You have it for the BBEG of the day, but don't really need it for any other time.

[WarrentheHero]

I never tried to say it was OP-sorry if it came off that way. I was trying to argue that it was (slightly) stronger than Spiritual Weapon, which is a 2nd-level spell, while Shard-Blade is listed as 1st-level.
Even that aside, I was concerned with its strength for being equivalent to a 2nd-level spell while Tiefling and Drow got 1st level spells. I have since looked it up and it appears I misremembered Tiefling's ability. While they get Hellish Rebuke (a 1st-level spell) at 3rd level, they cast it as 2nd-level.

So that said, while this race still seems in the strong side holistically, it's not as strong as I thought and I withdraw my complaint about the power of Shard-Blade.

[GandalfTheWhite]

Am I the only one who's first instinct is to play against type with this (type being INT caster/Psion) and go barbarian?

Cuz, I think that would be fun. Playing a barbarian who's intelligent

[PoeticDwarf]

I would probably go druid if I would play this, maybe a monk ^^

Race is balanced. You could say a special bad side effect when the Shardmind takes bludeoning damage. Vurneability sounds little bit as too much, maybe that's just me

[GandalfTheWhite]

I would probably go druid if I would play this, maybe a monk ^^

If you want to optimize, yes. But I'm thinking about playing it totally against type

[PoeticDwarf]

If you want to optimize, yes. But I'm thinking about playing it totally against type

A monk shardmind wouldn't be typically or optimised. Druid would be more OK but I think the barb would do allright too. It is as with the half elf

[DracoKnight]

A monk shardmind wouldn't be typically or optimised. Druid would be more OK but I think the barb would do allright too. It is as with the half elf

I test built the UA Mystic (released Feb 1 2016) using this race. In a playtest, the class did pretty damn good